The Reagan Doctrine of National Suicide

Ronald Reagan’s cunning and mischievous National Suicide Doctrine, is the cause of our present economic crisis in the United States. His insane anti-American doctrine is exactly the opposite of the patriotism of that true Republican, Dwight David Eisenhower, who led the Allies to victory over the Nazis, shaped the Korean Truce, balanced the national budget, and assaulted the bastions of racial segregation. No more pernicious and divisive philosophy than Reaganism has appeared in American politics since the time of Jefferson Davis.

Reagan openly announced his doctrine in his First Inaugural Address, when he said: “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Even more outrageous, the Reagan administration began to preach the slogan “Starve the beast,” in 1985, an idea later recycled by Sarah Palin in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Palin, who is married to a notorious Alaskan secessionist, is typical of Republicans, with her idea of cutting taxes until we have destroyed the national economy and the Government of the United States.

Reagan Republicans hate the Government of the United States. They call it a “beast.”

Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address, his doctrine of government suicide, is currently accessible at YouTube, and the text is at The Avalon Project of the Yale Law School http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/reagan1.asp. The phrase “Starve the Beast” applied to the government of the United States, originated with an anonymous hack in the Reagan White House, according to Michael J. New’s article in Cato Journal, (Fall 2009), published by the Cato Institute. Reagan’s words and his government destroying policy sets the tone for all subsequent discourses in American politics, and reignites the homicidal fires of American secessionism.

Republicans seek to validate a doctrine of localism, provincialism, and individual isolation that was openly rejected by Benjamin Franklin as early as 1754, repudiated by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in 1787, and subsequently condemned by John Adams. But the quasi-populist fires of American secessionism were secretly stoked by the Machiavellian slaveholder and pseudo-egalitarian, Thomas Jefferson in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. The hypocritical and devious Thomas Jefferson was always covertly hostile to George Washington, to the Government of the United States, to its Flag, and to its Constitution. Regrettably his philosophy moved increasingly to the right over the years, until he repudiated the anit-slavery doctrines of his youth and supported the expansion of slavery into the territories. Jeffersonian thinking was among the contributing causes of the Civil War.

The United States had to fight a Great Civil War to extirpate “Jeffersonian Democracy.”

Capitalism is a necessary ingredient of all civilization, and capitalism is impossible without the existence of Law and Order. Government is necessary for property to exist. This is known to every college graduate who has read the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, and Adam Smith. Without government, property is only an abstract and insubstantial theory. As Aristotle and John C. Calhoun pointed out, there has never been a human Society without government. And to this I would add that it is only within the context of Society. i. e. Government, that property rights can have any meaning, that capital can be accumulated, or that money can have any value.

All wealth derives from a social contract, and is inextricable from the idea of COMMONWEALTH.

Calhoun knew this was true, but he was intellectually dishonest, and worked to undermine the sacred institution of government that he knew was essential to human civilization, wealth, and happiness. His conception of culture was primitive, for he was not only a slaveholding racist, but contemptuous of the interests of the nascent industrial working class. Although he understood the necessity of strong government, he encouraged his constituents in refusing to pay their taxes, and for this, he was rightly upbraided by President Andrew Jackson.

Jackson was no paragon of statesmanship; he was a murderous, drunken brawler, a cold-blooded dueler, an Indian scalper, and a slave-driver. He stupidly destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, thereby causing a depression. But, to his credit, Andrew Jackson was the last American President to balance the budget and sink the national debt. He did this by asserting the principle that the federal government must collect taxes, at gunpoint if necessary. When South Carolina tried to nullify the Tariff of 1832, Jackson showed them he meant business. He demolished the extreme doctrine of states rights, announcing to the states rights deadbeats:

“The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact between the States or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a Government in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States.”

Law and Order, are identical with Government; they are the basis of Property, of Capitalism, and of every other aspect of Civilization.

Even in so-called “primitive societies,” money has always been more than a mere medium of exchange. Money is, and must be, by definition, a means of storing wealth. Traditional African and Native American societies, long before the coming of European colonialism, created and used sophisticated money systems, in the form of wampum belts, and cowry shells, as means of calculating debt and storing wealth. One of the means employed by European colonialists to destroy African and Native American economies, was to counterfeit indigenous currencies. Inflation of wampum and cowries were among the gimmicks employed by Europe in destroying African and Native American economies.

Gradual inflation, as Benjamin Franklin knew, is sometimes good, for it may stimulate the flow of goods and services, and accomplish great public works. But unrestrained inflation is an evil, for it destroys money the most convenient means of storing wealth, and the basis of any predictability and stability in the exchanges of labor and commodities. James Madison viewed “a rage for paper money,” as evil and pernicious. In today’s terms, he would have to include, not only paper, but electronic money which is being recklessly generated by the Federal Reserve System, and leads to an inflationary expansion of the money supply. But a national debt, in the form of a stable national currency, and the governmental capacity to issue reliable bonds, is a national blessing, as the wise and fearless genius, General Alexander Hamilton well knew.

One purpose of the Constitution was to thwart “inflation, an abolition of debts, or for any other improper or wicked project.” (Federalist 10) The right wing of the Republican Party is presently calling for an abolition of the National Debt, for no other reason than to bring down the Government of the United States. They advocate the destruction of the Full Faith and Credit of the Government of the United States, because they hate the Government of the United States!

One of the great and tragic ironies or our time is that the Republican Party, once the champion of National Union and vigorous government, has become the party of weak government, fiscal irresponsibility and secessionism. The party of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower has adopted the National Suicide policies of Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee, and Ronald Regan. How did this happen? It has to do with the disgraceful heritage of slavery and racism, as I shall demonstrate in a forthcoming essay. — Wilson J. Moses, 2011-04-14